Bookshelf

Natural History, Feb, 2002

What Shape Is a Snowflake? Magical Numbers in Nature, by Ian Stewart (W. H. Freeman, 2001; $29.95)

A mathematician explores pattern systems and explains the underlying framework of natural phenomena--from rainbows to the shape of liquid splashes and the wind-sculpted patterns of sand dunes.

Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn From Them, by Cindy Engel (Houghton Mifflin, 2002; $24)

Zoopharmacognosy--the study of animal self-medication--is enabling biologists to explain such practices as desert tortoises mining calcium to keep their shells strong and monkeys, bears, and coatis rubbing citrus oils and resins into their coats as insecticides.

The Age of Science: What Scientists Learned in the Twentieth Century, by Gerard Piel (Basic Books, 2001; $40)

This informed view of the last century's greatest advances in science is conveyed in elegant prose by the founding publisher of Scientific American.

Future Evolution, by Peter Ward; images by Alexis Rockman (Henry Holt, 2002; $35)

Looking to the past for clues about the future, a geologist predicts that a new age of humanity will radically revise the nature of life on Earth, and an artist envisions startling images of the animals, plants, and other organisms that may evolve thousands, possibly millions, of years from now.

Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm Of Vanishing Cultures, by Wade Davis (National Geographic Books, 2002; $35)

Through informative personal essays, combined with images taken during twenty-five years of exploration, ethnobotanist Davis celebrates traditional ways of living and thinking.

A History of Great Inventions, by James Dyson (Carroll & Graf, 2001; $32)

Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse, by David E. Brown (MIT Press, 2002; $29.95)

Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas, by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek (John Wiley & Sons, 2001; $24.95)

Three new books cover a sweeping array of world-changing devices and those who created them.

The Secret Life of the Brain, by Richard Restak (Joseph Henry Press/Dana Press, 2001; $35), is the companion volume to a five-part television series of the same name, presented by David Grubin Productions, Inc., and Thirteen/WNET New York. It begins airing on January 22.

Recent investigations of the human brain at various stages--gestation, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age--show that we are only now beginning to recognize its ability to change and grow over the course of a lifetime.

The Future of Life, by Edward O. Wilson (Knopf 2002; $22)

"The totality of life, known as the biosphere to scientists and creation to theologians," writes the eminent entomologist and Pulitzer Prize--winning author, "is a membrane of organisms wrapped around Earth so thin it cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered." The book is both an impassioned appeal and a guide to measures that can be taken to save the planet, such as the cessation of logging in old-growth forests and the creation of jobs in conservation and bioprospecting.

These books are usually available in the Museum Shop, (212) 769-5150, or via the Museum's Web site, www.anmh.org.

The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, by Andrew Byatt, Alastair Fothergill, and Martha Holmes (DK Publishing, 2001; $40), is the companion volume to a four-part television series of the same name, a coproduction of Discovery Channel and BBC's Natural History Unit. The first two parts air on January 27 and 28.

This sweeping investigation, in print and in film, explores the diverse realms within the world's oceans--Earth's largest, and largely unexplored, habitat.